• The campaign highlights a range of activities and opportunities for families, children and young people such as exploring a local museum or discovering a National Cycling Network Trail
• Families encouraged to get back out and Rediscover Summer after a year of missed opportunities

The government’s Rediscover Summer campaign has launched to help inspire families to get out and about safely and make the most out of summer.

Whether it’s visiting the places that inspired your favourite books, trying out a new sport or even learning how to code, the campaign will show families that there are plenty of new activities to try wherever they live. Throughout the duration of the campaign, each week of the summer holidays will promote a separate theme from sport and creativity to nature and heritage.

A Save The Children survey has shown how the pandemic has negatively impacted the social lives of our children and young people, with a third of children playing alone more, and a quarter having played less sport since the pandemic, raising concerns about the impact on their well-being.

To help combat this, the government is encouraging families to Rediscover Summer and enjoy the range of leisure activities on offer after a year of missed opportunities.

Tourism Minister Nigel Huddleston said:

Our young people deserve a summer filled with exciting and enriching activities after everything they’ve missed out on as we’ve fought to control the virus.

We want families to get out there and enjoy what’s on offer, and our Rediscover Summer campaign will help them do that. The summer has been given the best possible start with a terrific England run in the Euros.

Children and Families Minister Vicky Ford said:

Rediscover Summer will provide families with some fantastic opportunities to get back to the activities they may have missed out on over the last year. Our Summer Home Activities list will offer up more free ideas and options for children to stay active and have fun, and our expanded Holiday Activities and Food programme will also help families access opportunities both indoors and outdoors.

Parents have worked so hard to keep their children entertained so I hope they can take advantage of these to use the holidays creatively, helping to boost children’s wellbeing after what has been a really difficult time.

Launching today, a gov.uk page features a taste of the activities available over the summer to inspire parents and families and help young people get involved in their local communities. The activities suggested range from the Summer Reading Challenge to Chance to Shine cricket sessions and from trips to the Imperial War Museum to Mercury Theatre’s Family sing-a-long. No matter where you live, the campaign will show there is something for everyone.

Working closely with our partners, including Arts Council England, Sport England and National Museums Greenwich to help promote the breadth of summer activities on offer, this campaign will help get young people out and about this summer and make a difference in their communities.

This campaign will also be supported by the Summer Home Activities List due to be published online in the coming weeks which will inspire activities for families to do in and around their home this summer.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

• The themes for each week of the campaign are as follows. Visit our guide to find out more.
  • Week 1: Reading [26 July – 1 Aug] From reading your favourite books to visiting the places that inspired them, where will reading take you this summer?
  • Week 2: Creativity [2 – 8 Aug] From coding to music lessons, there are lots of ways you can get creative over the summer holidays, both at home and outside.
  • Week 3: Sport [9 – 15 Aug] Which sports and activities will you enjoy this summer? Why not try something new together?
  • Week 4: Nature [16 – 22 Aug] This summer is a perfect time to get back to nature. Plan your perfect walking route to explore the outdoors or use your imagination to create a lifeform that could survive in four environments outside this world
  • Week 5: Heritage [23 – 29 Aug] Explore fun and engaging activities and ways to explore your local heritage, this summer.
  • Week 6: Community [30 Aug – 5 Sept] Use the summer holidays to find out about your local community through volunteering or taking part in fun local activities.
• The Department for Education’s upcoming Summer Home Activities List will help parents identify enriching activities for their children to undertake over the school holidays, and will be published on gov.uk for free use and download soon.
• The expanded Holiday Activities and Food Programme, backed by up to £220 million, will continue to provide thousands of children enriching activities and nutritious food in every local authority in England this summer. Find out more about HAF here. Guidance for LAs is available here.
• The Active Recovery Hub includes hundreds of activities for children and young people of all ages, and can be accessed by parents over summer to find activities in their local area. *The Department for Education has also published COVID-19 guidance for parents and carers using out-of-school settings for their children over the summer here, to help support them enjoy these activities safely.

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• Amazon, Molson Coors, Sky and Three UK have joined a growing list of leading employers encouraging their staff to get vaccinated

• Businesses’ support includes flexibility for staff receiving the vaccine during working hours, giving paid time off, and providing sick pay for the minority who experience minor side effects

• LinkedIn has committed free advertising to help target employers

• Government calls on all UK businesses to join national mission to get people vaccinated

Amazon, Sky, Molson Coors and Three UK have joined forces with the government to encourage their employees to get COVID-19 vaccines.   Over the last six months, leading businesses have pledged their support in promoting positive vaccination messages and encouraging their staff to get the vaccine to ensure workplaces are safe and employees are protected from COVID-19.

Employers involved in the drive – including Asda, Slimming World, Metro Bank, Santander, Nationwide Building Society, Severn Trent and Merlin Entertainments – have committed to offering flexibility for staff receiving the vaccine during working hours and to signpost staff to NHS advice on vaccination. Companies have also committed to giving paid time off for employees, in addition to providing sick pay for the minority who experience minor side effects like fever or a headache. 

In order to galvanise more leading businesses and employers, LinkedIn has also committed resources and free advertising to help target CEOs and Directors to support their staff and encourage employees to get both vaccine doses by signposting to the government’s Employers Toolkit.

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi held a roundtable on Thursday this week with the businesses who have signed up to the employer coalition to thank them for supporting the largest vaccination programme in UK history and called on all UK businesses to join the employer coalition.

Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi said:

We’re extremely grateful to all the brilliant businesses who have supported the vaccination programme so far and we’re calling on every employer in the UK to join us in the final push to get the UK vaccinated. 

Our best chance of living with this virus safely is by working together, with everyone playing their part and getting both doses of their vaccine.

A total of 80,072,121 doses have been administered in the UK, with 45,697,875 people receiving a first dose (86.8%) and 34,374,246 people receiving both doses (65.3%).

This includes over half (54%) of young people aged 18 to 24 in England who have received a first dose – just three weeks after the programme was opened to this age group.

Every adult in England has been offered at least one dose and the Prime Minister announced this week that the vaccination programme is accelerating further, with all adults able to reduce their vaccine dose interval from twelve to eight weeks. This will mean every adult has the chance to have two doses by mid-September.

Amazon remains focused on boosting its voluntary COVID-19 testing capabilities for employees’ PCR tests at its new laboratory in Greater Manchester, which supports employee health and enables the online retailer to identify new variants and convey the data with Public Health England once the lab is approved for sequencing.

John Boumphrey, Amazon’s UK Country Manager, said:

Amazon employees receive paid time off to get vaccinated so they can continue to keep themselves, their colleagues and their communities safe. Additionally, working closely with local health authorities, we have also hosted vaccination clinics at several of our sites across the country.

Since the onset of the global pandemic, Amazon’s number one priority has been the health and safety of employees, and our internal COVID-19 testing programme is just one of over 150 safety measures introduced to help keep our people safe. More recently we enhanced our testing facilities and launched variant analysis to help support health authorities in fighting the virus.

Analysis from Public Health England (PHE) and the University of Cambridge suggests that vaccines have so far prevented an estimated 8.5 million infections and 30,000 deaths in England alone.

Data from PHE shows COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant. The analysis suggests the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after two doses.

Adam Firby, HR Director at Molson Coors Beverage Company, said:

Since the very start of this pandemic we’ve put the health and wellbeing of our employees first. We continue to strongly encourage our people to get both jabs when invited to do so and to support people in the right way.

We’ve been providing trusted information on vaccines through our internal communications, ensuring people have the flexibility to attend vaccine appointments and continuing to pay everyone 100% of their salary – whether they need a day or so to recover from a first jab or need to isolate because they’ve come into close contact with someone with Covid.

Vaccinated people are far less likely to get COVID-19 with symptoms and even more unlikely to get serious COVID-19, to be admitted to hospital, or to die from it and there is growing evidence that they are less likely to pass the virus to others.

YouGov polling also shows the UK continues to top the list of nations where people are willing to have a COVID-19 vaccine or have already been vaccinated and ONS data published on 2 July shows that more than 9 in 10 (96%) adults reported positive sentiment towards the vaccine.

Vaccines are available free of charge and from thousands of vaccine centres, GP practices and pharmacies. Around 98% of people live within 10 miles of a vaccination centre in England and vaccinations are taking place at sites including mosques, community centres and football stadiums.